My newest book, Hungry Oklahoma: Confronting Poverty and Food Insecurity, documents what poverty looks like in a state that has become in recent years one of the most conservative in our country. In a state rich in natural resources and a hardworking labor force, I ask why year after year, decade after decade, poverty thrives in ways completely foreign to many other regions throughout our country.
At the same time, I ask how this poverty has shaped, and continues to shape, those who must contend with it on a daily basis. Finally, I provide answers to how we can begin to address poverty and hunger in Oklahoma.
Published by the University of Oklahoma Press, my co-researchers and I spent over four years studying the various aspects of Oklahoma poverty and its impact upon the poor. Poverty in Oklahoma, for example, can directly affect individual and family health, the number of years children attend school, lifetime employment opportunities, and attitudes of self-worth and esteem
The point here is not to study just the people at the top of the economic and social heap when studying poverty, as is so often done, but to make an effort to learn from the poor what they feel and think. They alone through their own words and actions can tell us what poverty and hunger is like for them. And ultimately what we can do to help alleviate the problems they face from one day to the next.
Unfortunately, only a small number of historical studies in our very red state question misleading cultural stereotypes about poverty and the poor. These alternative historical accounts to the dominant narrative nevertheless can provide context to a clearer understanding of the obstacles the poor must confront in our Oklahoma.
Hungry Oklahoma is a companion volume to Waltzing with Ghost of Tom Joad: Poverty, Myth, and Low-Wage Labor in Oklahoma, first published by the University of Oklahoma in 2000. This time, in contrast to this first original research I completed in 1999, the COVID plague dominates the lives of those in poverty along with a new political climate driving the state further to the right.
As an Oklahoman-I have spent 30 years of my life living in Oklahoma and consider it my home-I have been a first-hand witness to the variety of ways the admixture of a plague and extreme politics impacts those with the least resources and political power.
It matters, then, whose perspectives one records and what data are relied upon when establishing the reasons for entrenched poverty in a state blessed with oil and gas along with other natural resources. At the same time, graft and corruption in Oklahoma among those in the highest places of power continues to be a neglected field of study among the majority of Oklahoma’s own academicians.
So buckle up. This will be a challenging ride into the heart of how Oklahoma currently treats its many, many citizens who are poor including women and children, the disabled, and military veterans. The perspective of those Oklahomans in poverty is a voice which must be heard. When contextualized with the long Oklahoma history of neglect of the poor by those who themselves are often steeped in corruption, it should give pause to all Oklahomans about what our state has become.
Your reactions to my blog and new book are welcomed in writing at my email address: marilr@ecu.edu. Two standards must always be met in expressing your viewpoints and opinions. First, always be courteous. At the same time, always support your responses with facts including your own personal experiences.
Lee Maril, Ph.D.
Jayme Hall, M.A.
